French Close In on Gunman

Suspect Planned Another Attack, Officials Say

Dow Jones reporter Inti Landauro reports from Toulouse, France on the end of the nearly two-day standoff between police and murder suspect Mohamed Merah. Police shot and killed him as he jumped from an apartment window. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier

By

Inti Landauro And

David Gauthier-Villars

Updated March 22, 2012 5:11 p.m. ET

TOULOUSE, France—French authorities publicly identified the suspect in a series of shootings of soldiers, schoolchildren and a teacher, characterizing him as an Islamist radical who had been planning to strike again Wednesday.

In a day of revelations and turns that gripped France, special forces descended on a Toulouse neighborhood at 3 a.m. Wednesday and surrounded a four-story apartment building, where the standoff continued into Thursday morning. It was occupied, authorities said, by Mohamed Merah, a 24-year-old French citizen of Algerian descent. They identified him as the suspect in the killings of four people at a Jewish school on Monday, as well as in the fatal shootings of three soldiers the previous week.

A 23-year-old gunman suspected of killing seven people in southwestern jumped from a window to his death in a hail of bullets after police stormed his apartment. (Video: Reuters/Photo: AP)

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the shootings in Toulouse were "the crimes of a monster and fanatic." Deborah Lutterbeck reports. (Video: Reuters/Photo: Getty Images)

Authorities said early Wednesday that Mr. Merah was speaking to a negotiator and had claimed responsibility for the attacks. They said he had promised to surrender in the afternoon. But as night fell, more special-forces troops arrived in the residential neighborhood, Côte Pavée, which went dark as power was cut to the area surrounding the building. About four hours later, just before midnight local time, three loud blasts were heard in what an Interior Ministry spokesman said was an effort to rattle the suspect.

A police official said a raid had commenced and that the suspect's door had been broken down. An Interior Ministry spokesman said shortly afterward that the blasts were meant to destabilize the suspect but that a raid hadn't started.

Police in Standoff With Suspect

French police stood guard outside an apartment building in Toulouse. Reuters

Victims Mourned in Jerusalem

Hundreds of people gathered at the Jerusalem cemetery Wednesday. Reuters

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Throughout the day, as funerals for victims were held in France and Israel, a clearer picture emerged of how authorities worked to connect the attacks to the suspect.

Mr. Merah appears to have been on the radar of French officials before the first killing now attributed to him. His name appeared on a government watchlist of hundreds of suspected French Islamic radicals who had visited Afghanistan and Pakistan. Common details between the three killings, plus a lead from an email exchange between a member of Mr. Merah's family and one of the victims, brought his name to the top of a list of suspects, police said.

Mr. Merah claims to have links with al Qaeda, according to police and prosecutors. His goal was to avenge Palestinian children and protest the French army's presence in Afghanistan, these people say he told police who were trying to secure his surrender.

Speaking at a news conference Wednesday afternoon in Toulouse, Paris Prosecutor François Molins said Mr. Merah had traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan twice in the past few years. The U.S. Army once sent him back to France, Mr. Molins said.

"During his first stay he was subjected to a random road control by the Afghan police, which led to him being handed over to the U.S. Army, which in turn put him on the first plane back to France," Mr. Molins said.

A police official said Mr. Merah was in Afghanistan in 2010 where French authorities say they believe he trained in military camps and fought alongside Taliban groups.

ENLARGE

Police surrounded a home in Toulouse where the alleged shooter, Mohamed Merah, was barricaded.
Zuma Press

American officials in Afghanistan believe Mr. Merah was picked up by Kandahar police on one of his visits, U.S. military officials said. These officials said that while they are reviewing their records, they have no information about whether the U.S. detained him or transferred him to France.

Mr. Molins said the suspect told the police that he had planned other attacks, including one Wednesday "on a soldier he had already identified." Mr. Molins didn't give further information on the alleged plan.

A different picture of Mr. Merah emerged in the accounts of some people at the scene of the standoff. He was a respectful person who didn't speak about politics or Islam and seemed more interested in motorcycles and disco dancing, according to a man who identified himself as a childhood friend. The man, who said he had seen Mr. Merah as recently as Sunday, said he was drawn to the scene out of disbelief at seeing the recent attacks linked to Mr. Merah.

Another friend, who identified himself as Kamel, said Mr. Merah had worked as an auto mechanic and had had "weird red hair at some point."

Mr. Merah had a long police record, with 15 arrests during his youth for petty crimes, French officials said. He spent two years in prison between late 2007 and late 2009 after a court sentenced him for stealing an elderly woman's handbag, according to Christian Etelin, the lawyer who defended him at the time. "He felt justice was harsher on him than on others," Mr. Etelin said.

Last month, Mr. Merah was given a one-month prison sentence for causing a minor traffic accident while riding a motorcycle without a license, the lawyer said. Mr. Merah was due to appear before a local court in April to learn whether he would serve the sentence, Mr. Etelin said.

ENLARGE

A volunteer in Jerusalem stands near the bodies of four victims of the shootings in Toulouse before their funeral services.
Ahmad Gharabli/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

ENLARGE

President Sarkozy pays his respects in a French ceremony.
Sipa Press

The first attack now attributed to Mr. Merah came on March 11, when a soldier who had advertised a motorcycle for sale went to meet a potential buyer. The soldier was shot in the head by a shooter who carried a .45-caliber handgun and escaped on a powerful Yamaha TMAX scooter, authorities say.

After that attack, investigators believed they were dealing with a local dispute, French Defense Minister Gérard Longuet said Wednesday. When two more soldiers were shot dead in Montauban, north of Toulouse—again by a gunman with a .45-caliber weapon who police said escaped on a Yamaha TMAX—the case was elevated to national priority, Mr. Longuet said.

"The terrorist lead became a central focus," he said.

Police noticed that the three victims had taken part in missions in Afghanistan. Combing intelligence files, investigators came up with a list of French nationals residing in the Toulouse area who were known to have traveled to Afghanistan.

Prosecutors also looked into the email and phone accounts of Imad Ibn-Ziaten, the first slain soldier, to see whether he had been in contact with his killer. Combing through the more than 500 answers Mr. Ibn-Ziaten received to his ad, investigators said they traced the origin of one email to a computer belonging to Mr. Merah's mother.

ENLARGE

Relatives mourned at the funeral Wednesday in Jerusalem of four victims of the Toulouse school shooting.
Reuters

French authorities are also examining whether Mr. Merah's brothers may have played a planning role in the attacks. His older brother, Abdelkader Merah, and their mother are in police custody. Prosecutors didn't say on what grounds. Neither the family members nor any legal representatives could be reached.

The email link was discovered Saturday, and Mr. Merah became a top suspect, police said. After Monday's attack on the Jewish school, police intensified their probe, tripling the number of specialized investigators dedicated to the case, they said, to more than 200. They say that at this stage in the probe, they were following multiple leads, watching thousands of hours of surveillance video, analyzing phone and Internet data and interviewing about 1,000 people as witnesses, potential suspect or informants.

ENLARGE

A photo shown on French TV said to be of Mohamed Merah.
Associated Press

Police said the decisive break came Tuesday, when a motorcycle dealer contacted them to say a man had recently come to his shop to ask about ways of disconnecting the antitheft tracking device on TMAX scooters. The man, whom the dealer said he had known since his youth, also mentioned that he had recently repainted his TMAX scooter, police said.

Knowing that the school attack was conducted by a man on a white scooter—and that a black scooter was used in the previous two attacks—the incident reinforced investigators' belief that they were on the right track.

ENLARGE

"The cross-checking of information that we had with the Internet address of interlocutors of the first victim allowed us to close in" on the suspect, said Mr. Longuet, the defense minister.

Mr. Longuet said he didn't think the deaths could have been avoided—even though the man was known to the authorities—"unless we turn France into a police state."

Police said they determined Mr. Merah's whereabouts Tuesday. Toulouse awoke Wednesday to a strong police presence, after the predawn raid, in which shots were fired and two policemen injured, authorities said.

Speaking from the scene of the standoff, Interior Minister Guéant said the suspect had been speaking to police for much of the morning, convincing authorities that he was behind the series of recent killings.

Footage of France's elite special police force in action -- the same police contingent deployed in the raid against a gunman in Toulouse suspected of killing seven people in the name of the al Qaeda. (Video: Reuters / Photo: Getty Images)

During a standoff with police, a man suspected in a string of shootings in France claimed to have links with al Qaeda. Inti Landauro reports from Toulouse. Photo: AP.

"As regards the killing of the children at the Jewish school in Toulouse, he was very explicit," said Mr. Guéant. "He said he wanted to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children." The suspect was "less explicit" on his motives for allegedly killing the three soldiers. He said the fact that they were of North African origin didn't feature in his decision. "What he wanted was to target the French army," said Mr. Guéant.

Prosecutors are asking how the suspect funded his alleged attacks. With known monthly revenue of about €500, or about $665, Mr. Merah had at least three addresses, rented several cars under monthlong contracts and had amassed an arsenal of guns, prosecutors said.

Police said they have yet to ascertain whether Mr. Merah benefited from al Qaeda logistical support to carry out his alleged attacks.

The priority is to arrest the suspect alive, Mr. Guéant said during the day, so that he can be presented to French judicial authorities.

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